


Rock/Hard Place

by Zeke Black (istia)



Category: The Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, M/M, Old West, POV Chris Larabee
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-11-15
Updated: 2006-11-15
Packaged: 2017-10-02 06:13:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/istia/pseuds/Zeke%20Black
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chris deals with the fifth anniversary of the murders of his wife and son...and Ezra deals with Chris.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rock/Hard Place

A vibration in the earth caught Chris's attention first, the ground quivering a message from his butt upwards through his body that sliced through his shadowed thoughts like the stab of an ice pick, thrusting him back into the cold clarity of the present. He lifted his head, eyes narrowed against sun glare and the ache of a whiskey headache, listening past the humming of crickets as he leaned to the right and snagged his holster to pull it close. He heard them now, hoofbeats loud in the afternoon stillness, approaching at a fast, but not urgent, clip. He cocked his head, studying the sounds. A single horse and a pace that indicated a purposeful goal; someone was intent on reaching this exact spot, this deserted, empty, barely known place a good ways off the traveled road.

When the hoofbeats slowed and Chris's horse whickered a friendly greeting, he sighed and lifted his hand from his gun to gather up the flask from his lap instead. Liquid sloshed in the half-empty container as he lifted it to take a long pull.

Dammit, Buck. He'd've thought Buck would know better, after all these bitching years, than to trail after him yet again when Buck, more than anyone, damned well knew Chris would only send him on his way with a flea in his ear.

Though he supposed it might be Vin. Vin was the other one who might've figured out where he'd gone, having the kind of mind that worked in oddly similar ways to Chris's own. Buck, on the contrary, seemed to follow him via knowledge of past actions, like he had patterns and maps of Chris's movements in his head and calculated trajectories like the gunners in the war. And like cannon shots, Buck's guesses weren't always accurate at first, but he was able to narrow possibilities down until he got a hit. That was the bullish in Buck's name and nature.

He'd been gone.... Hell, was it five days? Six? Not that long, but enough time for Buck to get to stewing and calculate Chris's direction and make up his--_impatient, pushy, goddamned can't-leave-it-alone_\--mind and head out to check on him. Like Chris was five years old....

He swallowed at a painful, angry knot in his throat, then washed it down with another mouthful of Red-Eye.

Vin might've figured his direction sooner than Buck, but Vin was less likely to come haring after him, at least so soon, so he put his money on Buck's appearing around the corner when footsteps crunched on the dry, stunted grass. He tilted his hat down and closed his eyes, his hand sweaty around the flask with the effort to keep the shake out of it. Buck didn't have any business coming after him, but Buck also didn't deserve the broadside of this anger that wasn't any part of Buck's doing.

He wasn't mad enough with the drink this time to lash out without caring. He just needed to get himself in hand before he dealt with Buck, send him packing without violence on either side and get back on his own goddamned course, no matter how squiggly Buck thought it was.

He kept his eyes shut when the footsteps paused a couple of feet away. He'd managed to force the tension down, tamping it into a deep corner of his belly the way his father used to tamp down the tobacco in his pipe, though in Chris's case to keep it from lighting rather than assuring it would burn better. He could smell horse and dust, heard weariness and frustration in the sigh that gusted over his head and smiled meanly to himself. Buck should damned well know by now what to exp--

He felt the air shift as the figure looming over him bent and plucked the flask from his grip with a brush of warm, callused fingers. With the movement wafted a stronger scent of horse and sweat and dirt and, distinctive under these universals, a hint of spiciness that belonged to only one person.

His eyes shot open and he lifted his head in time to see the flask tipped over to empty its contents on the ground, the stream of amber whiskey twinkling in the sunlight like a mocking laugh.

"Jesus bitching hell. Give me that!" He made a swipe for the flask, but it was pulled out of his reach with a quick, casual jerk.

"If you will insist on continually absconding with my silver flask, Mr. Larabee, you could at least do both its fineness and your own constitution the grace of filling it with a drinkable liquor."

Ezra produced a large tin hip flask, battered and familiar, from his coat pocket and poured a golden stream from it into his chased silver one. He paused to weigh the two, then held Josiah's tin flask out to him. Ezra's stance and stillness shouted mute challenge with the strength of a newsboy's lungs.

Chris followed the line of the arm in the dusty beige trail coat to Ezra's mouth, calm and set and dangerous. He lingered on it for a moment before his eyes were drawn to a streak of dirt on Ezra's unshaven cheek, and from there to the shadowed fastness of Ezra's eyes under his hat.

Chris dropped his own gaze to Josiah's flask and took it, putting it to his mouth. The smooth, silken fire of Highland Pure single malt burned down his throat straight to the tamped down ball of fury in his gut.

The cap to the flask bounced onto his lap from above. He picked it out of the dirt and screwed it on, letting the anger spread and blaze this time because this wasn't Buck intruding into his life and his business. It wasn't Buck or Vin, both of whom recognized boundaries when they were pointed out and respected them, like it or not.

"What the hell are you doing here? And how did you find me?"

He knew Vin wouldn't have helped Ezra to chase after him, and sure as bears shitting Buck wouldn't let anyone else get to Chris first, if he had a say.

Ezra slipped his flask into a pocket, then slid the shapeless coat off his arms with fluid, deliberate grace. He tossed it onto the smoke-blackened foundation next to Chris; the flask clunked lightly against the stones on impact. Ezra stepped close to him. Chris tensed to get up, realizing the mistake in his hesitation too late as Ezra lifted a foot over his legs to straddle him, then sank down to sit on his thighs, solid and determined as a cougar holding down its live prey. Chris cursed his drink-muddled reactions and dropped Josiah's flask.

"I'm here for the same reason you are." The scent of the clove oil in Ezra's expensive pomade flooded his nostrils again as Ezra bent his head and nuzzled down his throat.

He shoved Ezra back from him, but failed to dislodge him bodily. He met Ezra's clear stare and found his own anger mirrored, as tightly controlled, for the moment, as his, but just as dry tinder needing only a spark to set it off. He bit back his own outrage. If they got into it now, it'd be a bloody mess, worse than anything he and Buck had ever done to each other, Buck generally having more sense than to meet push with shove.

He opened his mouth, but Ezra forestalled him, repeating, in a low, sinuous voice: "I've come for the same reason you did."

"That's bull! You don't know a bitching thing about what I--"

Ezra caught his wrists, encircling them, half-manacle, half-caress; his thumb stroked over Chris's scabbed knuckle, not pressing enough to waken the soreness from his beating at a wall three or four days ago. But, as always with Ezra, the potential for pain lurked under the surface of gentleness, hidden from obvious sight like the deceptive strength in his fine-boned grip.

"I'm here because what I want is here. That's plain enough, isn't it, Chris? I'm here on a pilgrimage to seek what I want just as you came seeking what you believe you want."

Ezra lifted Chris's hand and studied the dirty scab he'd been stroking. Chris twisted both hands away and grabbed Ezra's shoulders.

"You ain't welcome here and you don't belong here. I want you off my property."

Ezra gave him a flat stare for a few moments, then ducked his head and stroked his bottom lip as he laughed. "Oh, my. I do believe you still think that bluster will win you the field." He looked up, the humor in his face vanishing without leaving a trace of warmth. "You'll have to do better than that to get rid of me. I don't intend to leave until I--" he bent his head again and licked a quick swathe along Chris's jaw, pulling back before Chris could react "--get what I came for."

Ezra pushed his hips forward so Chris couldn't go on pretending not to notice the hardness at Ezra's groin. Ezra pressed his crotch against Chris's while his agile fingers insinuated themselves between their bellies and tugged at the buttons of Chris's pants.

"You sick fucker. Get the hell off me!"

He shoved at Ezra hard enough to send him tumbling to the side into the dirt, but Ezra rolled over and was on his feet and turning to him in the same instant Chris gained his own. They faced each other, their harsh breathing drowning all other sounds. Chris kept his temper balled up in his fists, held rigidly at his sides. He took a breath and made his voice as even as he could, though it still scraped like a rusty nail in his own ears.

"Ride away, Ezra. I'm giving you the chance, right now. Ride away or I'll knock you out and tie you onto your horse and send it down the road in the general direction of Eagle Bend. If you're lucky, you might make it there in one piece."

Ezra took one long step forward, right up against him so he could feel the heat of his body and smell the mingled scents that made up Ezra. Ezra's bottle green jacket was dusty from his roll in the dirt and his thick, glossy hair was disarranged, rare sight on this fastidious man. His face was chill, but his eyes burned, the thin skin around them stained dark with exhaustion and showing small lines that were usually invisible. Ezra smiled; the dimples creased his grimy cheeks and the gold tooth flashed its jaunty salute. All normal as day, except nothing in Ezra's eyes or stance eased a dab.

The smell of malt reached him with a wisp of breath on his face as Ezra looked up at him and spoke in a lightly mocking tone and spread his hands to the sides. "Well, here I am--to quote your own charming self in similar circumstances."

Chris took a step back, uncertain whether it was to stop his fist that was itching to strike that damned taunting face or to gain the room to let it fly. Ezra followed with a stride of identical length and Chris found himself for a few moments in an absurd two-step of matched retreat-and-advance that propelled him into the sun's path. He stopped as pain spiked through his narrowed eyes and moved around Ezra, remembering why dealing with this man was so fucking frustrating even on a good day. He walked back to where Josiah's flask was lying and swept it up, taking a steadying drink before turning to look at the slowly advancing Ezra.

"Just go, Ezra." He kept his voice calm as his hand around the cool tin, ignoring the faint tremors in his tense limbs from the effort. "You don't belong here."

"And that's where you would be mistaken. Again."

Ezra pushed bodily up against him, taking him by surprise with a foot hooked around his ankle that pulled his feet out from under him before he could react. Ezra's strong hands grabbed his upper arms, both enforcing his downward momentum and controlling his fall. He landed hard on his back, the air knocked out of him for a brief dark spot, and came to awareness with Ezra straddling him again and his hands pinned to the ground above his head by both of Ezra's.

Ezra's hard cock poked Chris's belly as Ezra leaned forward to lay his upper body atop Chris's and kissed along his cheekbone under one eye. Chris bucked his hips, but Ezra merely tightened his powerful thighs on either side of them.

"What the hell do you want?"

Ezra pulled back and grinned, the amusement almost reaching his eyes this time; anyone less used to reading the subtle tells in Ezra's controlled expressions would be outright fooled. Chris's skin roughed with gooseskin.

"Come, Chris, I know you're not that obtuse. I want you and I intend to have you, here and now."

Ezra trailed another row of kisses along his cheek, from outer eye to mouth. Chris tensed, but Ezra pulled back without touching his lips and looked down at him with no glimmer of the smile or humor remaining.

"Then I'll leave you to stew in whatever shreds of fantasy you manage to retain."

And that was the Ezra he knew, making as much fucking sense as a gecko chirping at you on a canyon wall.

He bucked, but Ezra's legs clamped tighter and he leaned his weight on the hands pinioning Chris's. A line of sweat ran from Chris's hairline over his forehead into his eye, making his lid twitch like a damned tic.

"If you think I'm having sex with you here, of all the bitching places, you're crazier'n a loon. Now get the hell off me. And ride away."

Ezra looked down at him with a tilt-headed stare. "I have just lost an entire ten days to the aggravation of worrying about you, which destroyed my concentration and consequently cut into my profits to an exasperating degree. I gave you five days to come to your senses and return home, then made my way in a hot and uncomfortable journey to Purgatorio, your usual haunt at this time of year. After tracking down your current Maria--which, I'll just mention, required the greasing of more already oily palms with silver than I'm going to be forgetting for a long while--I discovered you'd lighted in that salubrious spot for only two days of drunken revelry and assorted mayhem before heading north."

He made another attempt to twist his hands out of Ezra's grip, but the bastard had the tenacious hold of a Gila monster, biting down hard while he injected his slow-acting poison. The smell of sweat between them was stronger now, inescapable and heady, mingled with the heated scent of Ezra's body in the tailed jacket he insisted on wearing in all weather and the siren essence of the cloves from the head of dark hair dipped too close to his face to ignore, making his nostrils flare. Ezra was rubbing his hard crotch in small circling thrusts against Chris's lower body.

It made the anger flare bright, that Ezra would try to do this to him, try to do this here.

"I haven't been gone that fucking long, and you're a goddamned--"

Ezra's usually smooth accent rasped as he lifted his voice to cut Chris off. "You spent the first five days north of the border appearing intent on merely moving from one saloon to the next, however erratic a course it took you on. Each establishment seems to have had the dubious pleasure of your company for varying spans of time; sufficient to rest your horse, refill my flask, and not much else, mostly, I gathered. On the sixth day, you abruptly veered away from any pretense of progressing toward our own enchanting little burg and made a beeline north-east."

Ezra thrust his face closer, his unshaven cheek rasping against Chris's stubble as he murmured directly into Chris's ear: "I'm not a stupid man, Chris. I believe you're aware of this indubitable, and really quite inescapable, fact."

"Dumber'n a skunk, in some matters," he shot back. And too smart for his own or anyone else's good, in other ways; but there wasn't any point in confirming what Ezra was already too cocky about for safety.

Ezra grinned, feral as a citified wolf. He eased back and shifted Chris's hands closer together over his head, capturing both wrists in his right hand. Chris twisted, but Ezra leaned on both hands to keep him pinned until Chris set his jaw and gave up the struggle. Ezra brushed a kiss to his temple as he pulled back, then his freed left hand pressed down between their bodies, going back to work on the buttons at Chris's fly he'd failed to get open last time. In moments, Ezra's hand slid inside, pressing warmth along the length of Chris's cock that Chris felt through his drawers.

"We're not doing this here." He spoke flatly, lying rigid under Ezra's knowing touch. "This ain't the place and you goddamned know it. You don't belong here and I don't want you." He lowered his voice, going for gentle, keeping the shake out of it with iron effort. "I don't bitching want you, Ezra."

Ezra's hand curled around his cock with equal gentleness as he settled lengthwise against Chris's side, plastered close with one solid thigh slung across Chris's. Warmth spread all along his cock through the thin barrier of cotton while Ezra rubbed his own erection against Chris's hip with an almost absent air--if anything Ezra Standish ever did could be considered aimless.

Tension tightened Chris's muscles with outrage that Ezra should try to do this _here_ and _now_, and why the fuck Ezra thought he could get away with it-- He met Ezra's eyes, gave him the message in cold, plain, silent script, ignoring the muscle that jumped along his own jaw. And saw in the thinning of Ezra's lips that he got it, before they curved into a humorless smile.

"Do you truly believe I was too moronic to know why you chose to accept my offer of--" Ezra tilted his head, looking like a bright-eyed raven hovering over him "--nocturnal companionship, shall we put it, rather than the similar offers of physical easement both Buck and Vin were so patently offering you during those first months of our little group settling down together in the back of beyond?"

He couldn't stop the jerk of surprise and narrowed his eyes at the flash of dimples as Ezra's grim smile momentarily deepened. Then Ezra was leaning on him, bending his head to press a kiss beside Chris's mouth.

Ezra murmured low as a secret, his body distractingly warm and heavy, his breath a hot whiskey-flavored current across Chris's sweaty cheek: "You considered me the safe option. Buck and you, all those years, the trials you'd been through with him ever at your side, the thorny entanglements between you: only an innocent wouldn't see you'd been sharing blankets, when courtesans weren't readily available--and Miz Travis's town fits that bill."

Chris arched his back and tensed to jerk his hands from Ezra's grasp. In a flash, Ezra's free hand moved inside the slit in Chris's drawers and took hold of his cock. Ezra's smooth palm and callused fingers closed around him in a hard grip: Just a smidgen this side of painful, exactly the touch Chris liked best, where pleasure ignited. As Ezra, the bastard, knew.

A dry chuckle sounded in his ear and Chris closed his eyes as Ezra's scent and heat and presence crowded too close in every bitching one of his senses.

"And then there was our Mr. Tanner, the two of you seeming to find instantly in each other an odd, symbiotic refuge from the weight of your respective ills. That both of you would consider easing your bodily needs together as well was an elementary conclusion.

"But that you would refuse both Buck and Vin, if there were a less potentially hazardous option available--well, let's just say I judged the possibility fell within the compass of safe play given my disdain for gambling." Ezra gave a throaty laugh, dry as the dead remnants of Sarah's flower border crinkling under Chris's back.

Ezra angled his head to trail kisses along Chris's jaw, and the muscle jumped in it again as clove-scented hair tickled his nose.

"Damn you, Ezra, get the hell off me." He twitched at the weakness in his voice, blaming the drink and lack of sleep of the past blur of days for undermining his ability to muster an effective defense against Ezra's willfulness.

Ezra was moving his hand up and down Chris's cock, a fluid motion of sweaty palm against loose skin that was distracting only because it was too damned familiar. Everything about Ezra over the past couple of years in Four Corners had become too familiar, the two of them simply part of the group of peacekeepers in public sight, but something else entirely behind closed doors. Something he'd never intended and never wanted, and still goddamned didn't _want_.

Ezra's mouth, as damp and warm as his hand on Chris's cock was moist and hot, circled down his neck. He lapped at beads of sweat in the hollow of Chris's throat, then nipped the thin skin over his collarbone. Ezra lifted his head and regarded him with a calmness that was unnerving, considering what his left hand was doing in Chris's pants.

Ezra chuckled, with actual mirth in it this time. "You believed I was the safe one. Buck, on the other hand, was all tangled up with your past, a good too many years of shared experiences between you that had created inextricable bonds. Buck, I'd warrant, represented a veritable quagmire of feelings you feared might escape your control and lead you where you wouldn't willingly be taken.

"And Vin, well. Vin, I imagine, was like a blaze in the darkness, threatening to provide you with far more than the haven of close friendship he'd already offered and you'd accepted, the communion between you illuminating the possibility of _caring_ and _home_ and _new beginning_. All those elements of a contented life most people crave and you had no intention of embracing again."

Ezra grinned merrily down at him as a rub of his thumb over Chris's glans drew a hiss from him. "And so you accepted me into your bed instead, because you knew, without a shred of doubt, I posed no threat to your barricades."

Ezra's smile evaporated into an intent stare down at him as his hand moved with quickening knowledge on Chris's swelling cock, now approaching actual pain trapped in tight canvas and cotton. "I was supposed to be merely a convenient, close-to-hand Maria, but you know what they say: The best laid schemes of mice and men...." He added, with a puckish grin, "Or even the redoubtable Chris Larabee."

Ezra let go of Chris's hands pinioned above his head and moved bodily down to lean over his groin. He freed Chris's cock from his pants, holding it in his fist while his other hand squirmed inside the tight space in Chris's drawers to close on his balls. Ezra blew onto the head of his cock, glistening where the foreskin had folded back, and Chris gritted his teeth to hold back a groan. Ezra slanted a look up at him, grim with understanding and pain, the dust-marked lines of exhaustion stark about his eyes.

"And even Chris Larabee is prone to fear when the unthinkable happens. You ran to ground here, seeking some kind of sepulchral comfort that, Lord help me, I can almost comprehend." His voice hardened and his fingers tightened on Chris's balls. "But I have a stake in this pot, too, Chris, and you will not deny me my turn at play."

Ezra's breathing went ragged for a moment and he blinked and licked his lips before continuing in the same unyielding tone. "We're both going to spill our seed here, on this ground, where there's nothing alive but you and me." He lifted his eyes to meet Chris's. "Because I want it and you need it."

"Jesus H. Christ, Ezra--"

But Ezra wasn't listening, no more than he usually did when intent on some purpose of his own. It'd been exhilarating from the first, being the focus of Ezra's powerful concentration when they were in bed, but it had made other bedmates' abilities progressively pall in comparison until it became unsettling. He'd grown to like it too much and depend on it as a regular thing, then found himself wanting it outside of bed, too. Ezra's attention on him, even veiled in public, was like pinpoints of condensed heat that made his skin prickle and his pulse jump.

He closed his eyes as Ezra swirled his tongue with a flickering touch around the head of his cock, then slid his lips slowly down over the head in a tight, massaging sheath. Fisting the rest of Chris's cock with a tight, demanding grip, Ezra's mouth moved up and down, sucking in a rhythmic movement that matched his fist's increasing speed below the glans. Ezra's nimble fingers jammed inside Chris's pants squeezed and tugged at his balls just shy of too hard, walking that perfect line between pain and pleasure Ezra knew to a T.

Ezra had never been shy of being as rough as Chris wanted, never questioned it or raised an eyebrow, but he varied it with determined gentleness. Chris hadn't wanted it at first, hadn't needed it, but Ezra's particular touch, the mix of hard and soft he dealt Chris, had proved as insidious as everything else about Ezra, from the scent of him to his voice to his sharp gaze and quick mind, the whole of him wheedling its way into Chris's life.

He lifted a hand and touched Ezra's head. His hair, even dulled with trail dust, was soft under his fingers, thick and waving, but short, shorter even than many men's. Nothing approaching a woman's luxuriant hair trailing over her husband's body like a tantalizing silken net. He stroked Ezra's head as it moved up and down, his mouth still sucking powerfully and his tongue providing its own muscular pressure as the foreskin rolled entirely back and heat flooded the length of Chris's erection.

Seeking the give and warmth of flesh, he moved his hand to the back of Ezra's neck, sliding his fingers under the shirt collar to touch damp skin, wishing the shirt and jacket gone so he could stroke across the broad, smooth shoulders. Ezra's body was the same mix as the rest of him, with the weight and hardness of a man's muscles, but skin fine-grained as a woman's, and with the scent of a man, of gun oil and sweat and saloon smoke, but overlain with his fancy oils and soaps that weren't a woman's smell, but were a far cry from a cowboy's lavender water.

Chris had screwed men before, casual encounters--Buck aside--but he'd never met one who was hard and soft together quite like this, tough and gentle at once. Buck could be tender, but he reserved that for women, who accepted it as Chris never had, and Buck had never pushed. But Ezra, hell; Ezra not only forced gentleness onto Chris, but was a fucking chimera of different creatures rolled into one. Ezra would bend like a reed when he needed to, but could also be immovable as an oak--and was likely to turn stubborn just when a man was expecting him to bend.

Often as not, he couldn't tell which Ezra he was likely to wake up with--or find in his bed when he went to it; then, just when he thought he'd got it figured, Ezra would turn into a different blend of his parts and set him off-kilter again. Even after two years, being with Ezra still meant constantly blazing new trails, burrowing deeper into Ezra's whorls and knots.

Sex had been the whole of it, to begin with. And sex still wasn't the least of it, but it wasn't nearly the whole it'd been meant to be. Or should be, the unbendable oak in himself kept insisting, for his own bitching peace of mind.

His balls were tightening, familiar herald that had his breath hitching and his hand tightening on Ezra's nape. The shifts of Ezra's muscles and backbone, as his head rocked back and forth, and the vibrations from Ezra's sucking were dual sensations quivering through Chris's hand and cock. Ezra gave Chris's balls a last, hard, just-about painful squeeze, then shimmied his hand free of Chris's pants. He unbuttoned his own trousers one-handed, the rhythm of his mouth and other hand not faltering a jot, and pulled his erection out of confinement with a murmuring sigh around his cock that made Chris's toes curl in his boots.

Ezra's weight shifted against him and Chris opened his eyes to see Ezra's hand flying along his own cock, as quickly but with a lighter clasp than the hand working Chris's; Ezra didn't enjoy the harsh-edged touch Chris did. He watched the head of Ezra's cock pop in and out of view in his fist like a chippy in a crib teasing with a veil, and the sight of the glans, red and shiny and swollen, made his own cock pulse and his gut tense. Ezra's grip tightened on Chris's cock; he pulled his mouth away with a slurping sound, exaggerated and dirty, the way Chris liked, nothing like any sound Ezra would ever make in public. Ezra licked wide, tantalizing swathes up and around the shaft, then sucked the head back into his mouth.

The suction on his cock abruptly stuttered and Ezra pulled his mouth away, his hand closing more tightly as he turned his head aside, panting while he milked his erection onto the arid ground. Ezra's breathing went wild for a moment, and Chris rubbed his thumb up and down Ezra's neck into his hair until it steadied. Ezra let go of himself and turned his attention back to Chris's aching cock.

Chris reached down to close his hand around Ezra's, making Ezra jerk him fast and without finesse to climax, pulling away to roll to the side onto his hip to avoid spattering either of them as he came. When his vision cleared, he stared at the remnants of white fluid disappearing into the dry, scrawny weeds where Sarah's bluebonnets and Mexican poppies once brightened the earth. A spike of hate and resentment rushed over him for Ezra, fierce as he felt for himself: for feeling alive, for having to struggle to remember Sarah's face and Adam's voice, the two of them fading with each year that passed despite his efforts to hold onto them, while other people, while Ezra, and a new place grew ever more vivid and real.

Something was pressed into his hand, and he flinched back to the present to find himself holding a white handkerchief and to hear Ezra's distinctive voice, more familiar and homey now than the ones he'd last heard five years ago, compelling in his senses as theirs no longer were, and impossible to ignore.

"This is fallow ground, Chris. Nothing can change that, and it's not a desecration to...want again. Unless you will it so."

He wiped off his hands as Ezra straightened his clothes, then tossed the handkerchief into Ezra's lap, buttoning up his pants as Ezra cleaned his own hands and pocketed the cloth. Shifting onto his knees, Ezra leaned forward, slowly, with a characteristically wary but determined courage that made Chris ache, and pressed his lips to Chris's mouth, firm but undemanding. Chris didn't kiss him back, his lips feeling wooden, but he got the taste of Ezra's mouth, knew the faint bitterness of his own fluid mingled with whiskey and Ezra's spit, before Ezra pulled back.

Chris got to his feet and watched Ezra rise smoothly to his own. Chris's voice came out of his tight, raw throat like the scratch of a tumbleweed against a fence. "What the bitching hell did you hope to get from this, Ezra? You think forcing me to come's some kind of victory?"

Ezra huffed a laugh, looking genuinely amused, though sad with it. He shook his head. "We both know you could've freed yourself at any time, Chris. You've kept Buck at arm's length for years, and he's bigger than both of us. You've faced down countless opponents anyone would consider offer a more menacing danger than I pose." Ezra stopped patting the dirt from his sleeves and faced him squarely. "It would've been simple enough to follow through on your threat to punch me and send me packing--at least, if you didn't mind hurting me."

His eyes slid past Ezra to the glimpse of the two whitewashed crosses inside the rough fence. In the corner of his eye, he saw Ezra's head turn briefly to follow his gaze.

"I don't want to hurt you, Ezra. I just want you to go."

"Your wife and son are dead. There's nothing left here except their graves and this--" Ezra's gaze flitted over the charred skeleton of the house and he grimaced "--sad ruin that can't ever be your home again. I know you always go off the rails at the anniversary of their deaths, but that was ten days ago. I'm--" He broke off and swallowed audibly. "I've done what I came for. It's time I went home." He met Chris's eyes with a worn, grim, caressing look for a long moment. When he spoke again, his voice was soft as a Louisiana breeze. "You know the way."

Ezra straightened his jacket and strode across the yard to lift his trail coat from the scorched foundation rocks. He put it on, settled his hat on his head and turned to face Chris. The air seemed to still between them as Chris studied features that were too well-known, feeling a chill down his spine at the thought of them blurring in his memory, too, if he didn't see them for a handful of years.

Ezra touched the brim of his hat with a nod and walked away, rounding the side of the house and moving out of sight.

Chris moved stiff-legged to lean against the scorched stairs, legs wide-set, his cock still sensitive inside his tight pants. The aftershocks of orgasm were still quivering through his blood, along with the shock that Ezra would force this confrontation, so different from Buck's attempted handling of him over the years or anything he could ever imagine Vin dishing out, even if he'd given into the danger of seeking intimacy with Vin.

But Ezra was right: Vin probably wouldn't have had to; and Buck had his own holds on Chris he'd gone out of his way to avoid.

_Ironic, wouldn't you say?_ The words sounded in his head in Ezra's unmistakable drawl, dry and amused. Chris snorted and leaned to retrieve Josiah's dented flask, taking a drink of what Ezra's mouth tasted of. One of Ezra's favorite words, "irony." No bitching wonder, with his knack for worming his way in where he wasn't expected.

He pushed to his feet with a grunt, feeling the pull of muscles in his back a man of forty had to expect after rolling around on the ground. He dropped the flask and walked to the fenced plot, the hoofbeats of Ezra's horse sounding behind him. He put his hands on top of the rounded ends of two new pickets. Several of the slender branches he and Buck had fashioned into posts that long ago day had been missing when he'd arrived, the whole place looking sorrier than the last time he saw it, two years ago with that damned Blackfox in tow. He'd fixed the fence and straightened the crosses, the sum of what he was able to do for his family now.

He went inside the plot and drew Sarah's locket from his pants. He unwrapped the fire-blackened silver from the rag protecting it and straightened the locket on his hand, his fingers feeling clumsy on the delicate thing. He'd tried to clean it after retrieving it from Ella Gaines' cache of gristly souvenirs, but he couldn't restore it any more than he could Sarah and Adam.

He squatted between the graves and opened the locket to look at the tiny photograph of himself. His hand shook as he pictured Cletus Fowler walking among the smoldering ashes, careless of the bodies of the innocent woman and tiny child whose screams he must have listened to as the flames lit the night; of Fowler seeing the locket, picking it up and opening it, curious and detached.

He took a deep breath and shut the locket with deliberation, mindful of the damaged hinge, and closed his fingers around it into a helpless fist. Fowler was dead; Ella disappeared, untraceable in the year since their encounter with her. He had no target and no course he could act on, and nothing here to reclaim.

He loosened his fingers and folded the rag back around the locket before tucking it carefully away again. He looked between the two crosses, then lifted his eyes, blinking past the remains of the house and the blackened windmill to the only living thing here. Home and family were the things most worth fighting for in this world, but he couldn't find either here.

He wired the narrow gate shut and collected his gear. His horse moved its feet with impatience to be moving as he saddled it and tied on his blanket roll and saddlebags.

"Yeah, you'll get some oats tonight to make up for all this scraggy grass, boy." He slapped the thick black neck and swung up into the saddle. The gelding danced forward and he let it set the quick pace it wanted down the overgrown trail that led to the road.

The junction came in sight ten minutes later--along with a familiar horse foraging at the side of the path and an equally familiar figure reclining on a rock with his back to a spindly cottonwood and his hat pulled down over his eyes. The horse turned its head with a friendly greeting before returning to its grazing. Ezra looked up from under his hat with a measuring look that eased under Chris's steady gaze.

"Well, well, I do believe I won that bet with my alter ego." Ezra sat up and made a show of pulling his watch from his vest pocket and opening the cover to peer at it before slipping it away again, but the bright, cocky smile he directed up at Chris was laced with that damned gentleness of his.

The folly of ever having thought Ezra was the safe option hit him like the recoil of a Winchester '76, washing him with wry amusement.

He returned Ezra's smile in kind, letting Ezra's warmth leach away the last chills of memory. The moment lingered, Chris's acknowledgement and Ezra's relief weaving another tie between them, until his horse tossed its head and made a lunge for the road that almost pulled the reins from his slack hands. When he won the contest and backed it up to where they'd been, Ezra was laughing, his gold tooth sparkling and all hint of darkness chased from his eyes.

Chris licked his lips, recalling the fleeting taste he'd had of Ezra's mouth during the kiss he'd refused to return, and quelled the impulse to dismount and canoodle like sparking kids in view of the main road. Instead, he pulled Josiah's flask from his duster pocket and gestured with it. "Get your butt up and moving, Standish. I've got a hankering for real whiskey, not this swill you favor."

"You have a cretinous soul, Chris." Ezra tightened the cinch on his chestnut and grinned as he mounted. "I can't imagine why I lavish so much time and effort on you." As they moved at a trot onto the road, Ezra rubbed his thumb over his bottom lip and shot him a slantwise look hotter than the sun beating on Chris's back. "Though if we're going to spend the night in Eagle Bend, you'll have time to seek out a fine establishment that offers a good featherbed in which you can do your utmost to remind me."

Chris's mouth twitched; it wouldn't be Ezra if he weren't angling for something special, and for someone else to do the work of getting it for him. "It'll be the saloon or the boardinghouse, Ezra, and whatever bed they offer. They're fine enough for me."

He saw his own returning balance reflected in Ezra's relaxed face, though trail dust still scored the exhausted lines that made Ezra look older than usual. Chris faced the road ahead, figuring those lines probably reflected the look of him, too.

"Hell, we're both too bitching tired to remind each other tonight of anything except how you try to hog all the blankets--"

"--and how you are incapable of staying on your own side of the bed." Ezra chuckled with sultry amusement.

And how sharing a bed meant neither of them was alone.

With a glance of silent agreement, they broke into a matched lope and rode abreast down the road.

**Author's Note:**

> "The best laid plans of mice and men" is from Robert Burns' poem _To a Mouse_, written 1785.


End file.
